As promised, NetEqualizer is now offering the utilities necessary to meet requirements set forth this month by CALEA, or the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. This law oversees telecommunication security and has now been expanded to Internet security. There are some fairly harsh federal penalties for noncompliance that became effective May 1.

In the spirit of protecting our nation, the mission is not to make life miserable and expensive for operators and thwart communications, but rather to give the FBI and homeland security tools to wire tap (if we can borrow the term) Internet conversation on a moment’s notice. We suspect it would be a rare occurrence for a small WISP to receive a warrant to comply, but it would be potentially devastating to security should the means to monitor conversation not be available.

The following updated Q&A will address NetEqualizer’s capabilities in reference to CALEA compliance.

1. Functionally, what does the Netequalizer CALEA release provide?

We provide a network probe with the following capabilities:

It will allow an ISP or other operator to comply with a basic warrant for information about a user by capturing and sending IP communications in real time to a third party.

Communication may be captured by headers or headers and content.

2. In what format is the data portion sent to a law enforcement agency?

We will provide basic descriptive tags identifying headers, data, and time stamps, along with HEX or ASCII representation of content data.

3. Do you meet the standards of the receiving law enforcement agency?

The law and specifications on “how” to deliver to a law enforcement agency are somewhat ambiguous. The FBI has created some detailed specifications, but the reality is that there are some 40,000 law enforcement agencies and they are given autonomy on how they receive data. We do provide samples on how to receive NetEqualizer-captured data on a third party server, but are unable to guarantee definite compliance with any specific agency.

4. Does the NetEqualizer do any analysis of the data?

No. We are only providing a probe function.

5. Is the NetEqualizer release fully CALEA compliant?

Although the law (see CALEA sections 103 and 107(a)(2)) is fairly specific on what needs to be done, the how is not addressed to any level of detail to which we can engineer our solution. Many people are following the ATIS specification which was put forth by the FBI, and we have read and attempted to comply with the probe portion of that specification. But, the reality is that there is no one agency given the authority to test a solution and bless it as compliant. So, if faced with a warrant for information, the law enforcement agency in charge may indeed want something in slightly different formats. If this is the case, there may be additional consulting.

As best we can tell at this time, there is no one government agency that can fully declare our technology CALEA compliant. However, we do pledge to work with our customers should they be faced with a warrant for information to adjust and even customize our solution; however additional fees may apply.

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